


into the quiet

by Anonymous



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 17:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12089529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: the world has ended and against the silence, a little company goes a long way





	into the quiet

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for SASO 2017 Round 1 for the following prompt [here](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/21522.html?thread=10614802#cmt10614802):
>
>> post-apocalyptic AU; kawanishi and futakuchi are a pair of hardened survivors who may not have very much left, but damn it all they still have one another.

The first time they meet, Futakuchi fights him for food and wins.

The second time they meet, Futakuchi fights him for a bicycle. He’s tired and he other guy is _just_ that much taller and his punches are _just_ that much more accurate and so this time it’s Futakuchi who ends up on the ground with a pounding temple while the other rides away.

The third time they meet, it’s during a flash storm and Futakuchi jumps into an abandoned bus for shelter. The other guy is already curled up at the back and he bristles when he catches Futakuchi’s eye, spine tense and eyes ready to go.

Futakuchi holds up both his hands in peace and slumps onto the closest bench. “Not today,” he yells over the rain. He’s tired and sore and scared of the dark. All he wants is to curl up and cry and stop pretending to be braver than he was.

The wind howls through the broken windows and he pulls his jacket in closer, shivering when his skin presses against the damp patches where the rain soaked through. He has his eyes closed for a minute before he hears the sound of footsteps on metal. He sits up, spinning around with his fists clenched.

“I have nothing to give you,” Futakuchi yells. The door is behind him and he’s ready to run if he sees a knife.

The other guy squints at him, stopping a few rows away. “Do you want a blanket?” he asks, gesturing at the back row.

Futakuchi hesitates, “I have nothing you want,” he repeats.

“I have three blankets.”

Futakuchi goes.

 

 

—

 

 

“Why?” Futakuchi asks, once he’s snuggled up in a corner where the wind doesn’t touch, “Why did you offer?”

“Why didn’t you fight me?”

“Why would I?”

“For the bike?”

“I won the first time so we’re even. Anyway it’s yours, you deserve it.”

“I hit you.”

Futakuchi shrugs, “the rules are different now.” _Different to before._

The guy is still staring at him and if it was the old world, Futakuchi would’ve fought him right then and there, just for staring a bit too long. But it’s the new world and new world Futakuchi knows how to pick his fights. Save his energy for when he has something to gain, or something to lose. “Why did you offer?” he asks again.

The guy looks to the side and rubs his neck, “It’s warmer with two people.” His voice is soft, and young. He sounds like Futakuchi the day his mother left.

“Yeah,” Futakuchi looks away, looks out through the broken windows and past the dark and into a city half destroyed and festering. “Yeah.”

 

 

—

 

 

They fall asleep like that, side by side. Two boys sharing three blankets.

Futakuchi dreams he was on the way home from school, muscles tired from practice. He’s sleeping on the bus with his head on Aone’s shoulder and the afternoon sun on his cheek. He has homework to do but his mother is making curry and Aone is sleeping over and One Piece is on at 8pm.

When he wakes up, he finds himself crying. He wipes his face but the stain is still there, on the other boy’s shoulder. He rubs the cloth between his fingers but it wouldn’t fade so he puffs his cheeks and blows on it lightly.

The other boy jerks awake and looks at him like he’s crazy before noticing the wet patch. He scrunches his nose.

“Sorry I drool,” Futakuchi forces himself to grin.

“Disgusting,” the other boy clucks, but the tone is light and sleepy and without malice, “Pay me back in food.”

“My company is priceless.”

 

 

—

 

 

They stay together, because Futakuchi doesn't leave, and the guy, Kawanishi, doesn't tell him to go. After all, when the world is so big, a little company goes a long way. Even if Kawanishi is a little prickly-looking and smug at times.

 

 

—

 

 

They find a local High School and jump the fence.

(Futakuchi thinks of a morning just months ago. He and Aone were late and the grounds keeper stood by the gates with a baton. They climbed the wall then, Futakuchi climbing over Aone's shoulders and Aone hoisting himself up. They sprinted so hard Futakuchi felt the laughter bubbling at his throat.)

He doesn't run, this time, because there's no one to chase them. The grounds are eerily quiet. A quiet Futakuchi thought he was used to, but still wasn't. Not when his memories are louder.

Kawanishi scans through rows of lockers before finding a set of shoes his size. He tries them on and, nodding his head, stuffs them in his backpack.

(Futakuchi thinks of an autumn afternoon, finding love letters tucked next to his shoes, finding borrowed calculators from second period or dropping stolen homework into Nametsu’s locker a few rows over.)

The classrooms are empty and filled with dust. Futakuchi squats in the back and sees discarded bentou boxes, crinkled textbooks, unopened snacks, little remnants of the students that used to occupy this space.

(For the first time in his life, Futakuchi wishes he was in class again.)

They find almost a hundred bicycles in the back, still chained in neat rows and Futakuchi feels a silly spilling blood over just one, that time weeks ago. Kawanishi lets loose a low whistle, inspecting a few until he finds one with no rust. Futakuchi hands him a pair of piers to ply the metal. He feels a little bad and it must've shown on his face because Kawanishi says --

"It's not stealing if no one's coming back for them."

 

 

—

 

 

There's very little to do in a world where there's no school, no parents and no electricity.

There's actually so much to do (and so much they could do no longer).

The days seem longer without a schedule. No _eight o’clock roll call_ or _one o’clock lunch_. Just the sun rolling over broken buildings and sinking into an unending horizon to harbour any sense of time.

They go to Aoba Castle because entrance is free now, and leave before dark because Futakuchi’s spine starts to tingle at the gaping windows and the statues that seem to be staring right at him.

They find an old pinball machine without the pinball so Futakuchi rolls up a wad of paper and it works for two rounds until it doesn’t. They carry it away and hide it because its something both of them want to come back to.

Once in a while they find a vending machine that hasn’t been looted and they fill their bags joyously, stuffing it full with cans of coffee and corn soup and milk tea.

When it rains they go to a train station, sitting down on steel benches for an hour or two. Sometimes Futakuchi reads the map, tracing familiar lines. His eyes catches on Kunimi Station and his mind trips on a face he used to know.

(It happens a lot. Seven-Eleven reminds him of a cousin who used to work there. Bookshops make him think of his teacher at cram school who told him to read more. Aoba-dori Station throws him back to the time he was stood up for a date. Sendai Stadium is, is — is _volleyball_ and now Futakuchi is full of painful nostalgia that chokes him in the lungs and grabs him by the heart and — )

Neither of them talk because the streets are quiet, so quiet it feels like they should not be here, like every footstep was an intrusion, every breath a scar upon the world. Like they are ghosts wandering a city that has forgotten them.

 

 

—

 

 

They decide to spend a night inside a convenience store, pushing empty shelves until they could be hidden from any onlookers. The exit sign is still glowing, running on whatever leftover battery from ages ago. Futakuchi wonders if he can take it apart and use whatever’s inside.

A lot of things have already been taken. Food, cigarettes, clothes. Kawanishi’s taking apart umbrellas for the metal wiring and Futakuchi scavenges through boxes for something useful. He finds toothpaste, rock candy, and the last edition of _Shounen Jump_. He takes it back to Kawanishi and they knock foreheads trying to read simultaneously. As he turns the pages, Futakuchi pushes down the realisation that he will never know how these stories finish.

When he was young and cliffhangers hurt that much more, he would roll and bed and pray to travel far into the future. So far ahead that the series is already finished and he could run to a library and read the next chapter and the next and all the way to the end of it all.

But now, he knows that these stories will never be finished, that the wish could never come true. There is no one who knows how they end. Even if there were, there was no one to draw it, no one to publish, distribute.

He’s thinking too much.

”I wonder who Naruto ends up with?" Futakuchi asks, when they reach the last page.

"Hinata."

"Sakura,” Futakuchi blurts out, just to be spiteful.

Kawanishi looks at him as if to say, _fight me._

"Fight me," Futakuchi says out loud and Kawanishi raises an incredulous eyebrow before rolling his eyes.

"Been there done that won that battle."

Futakuchi tackles him.

 

 

—

 

 

Even though everything is different, Miyagi, in a way, is still the same.

The zelkova trees on Jozenji Street are still standing. Hirose River is still beautiful in the sunset. The summer sky is still the same, with stars shining brighter than their childhood dreams.

In winter its cold but they still look up because the city is pitch black and unfamiliar. Side by side, two boys sharing three blankets and a cityfull of silence.

They may not have very much left, but they still have one another and in this new world, that's enough.


End file.
